Excerpts from upcoming review in The Absolute Sound (May/June 2017) from Robert Harley. The excerpt was posted at:
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/dedicated-schiit-yggdrasil-thread.424701/page-15
"Price aside, the Yggy turned out to be a world-class contender in the same league as cost-no-object digital-to-analog converters—and I’ve heard some good ones. How could this be? I can’t tell you how Moffatt did it, but I can describe how the Yggy sounds, and why its one of the three best DACs I’ve heard regardless of price. (The other two are the $19,500 Berkeley Alpha Reference and the $35,000 dCS Vivaldi. I suspect that the MSB Select is outstanding, after hearing it many times at shows, but I haven’t evaluated it in my own system.)"
"For starters, the Yggy has a bold, assertive, vibrant, even vivid presentation. You’d never mistake the Yggy for a tube DAC. In this characteristic, and others, it reminded me of the Theta processors of 25 years ago, but taken to another level. The Yggy also sounded different from other DACs I’ve heard; it was as if nearly all those other DACs were merely variations with a common character, cut, if you will, from the same sonic cloth.
"One of the qualities that makes the Yggy special is its ability to reveal, with startling clarity, individual musical lines within complex arrangements. Every instrument, voice, and sound is spatially and timbrally distinct. This had the effect of revealing each musical line with great precision, and with that precision comes a fuller, richer, and more complex presentation of the composition and arrangement, as well as the intent of each musician. The Yggy is the antithesis of congealed, homogenized, flat, confused, or thick. Many years ago I described the soundstage of a Theta DAC as “sculpted.” That description applies to the Yggy as well, but in the Yggy the three-dimensionality and vividness that allow resolution of each musical line are rendered with greater naturalness and ease. The Theta processors could sound a bit artificial and overly “Technicolored” in this regard, but the Yggy presents this tremendous clarity and dimensionality in a completely organic and musically natural way."
"CONCLUSION. I don’t know how Schiit Audio has done it, but the $2300 Yggy is in many ways competitive with any DAC I’ve heard regardless of price. In some criteria—transient speed without etch, clarity of musical line, whole-body involvement—the Yggy is as good as digital gets. Yet the Yggy’s bold incisiveness may not resonate with listeners who prefer a more relaxed and easygoing sound. I, however, have no such reservation; this is a DAC I could listen to and enjoy for a long time. In fact, there was something different about the Yggy that pushed my buttons—I felt a musical exhilaration that was experienced not as some intellectual abstraction, but at a more fundamentally visceral level. If you’re looking for a DAC that does quad-rate DSD, decodes MQA, offers a volume control, and includes a headphone amp, look elsewhere. But if the very best reproduction of PCM sources is your goal, the Yggdrasil is the ticket. It’s a spectacular performer on an absolute level, and an out-of-this world bargain. The Yggy is not just a tremendous value in today’s DACs, it’s one of the greatest bargains in the history of high-end audio."?